MAQUINITAGATE: D.A. SAENZ CIRCLES THE WAGONS, ENEMIES LIST, WITHHELD DOCUMENTS, AND INCRIMINATING EMAILS

By Juan Montoya

Part 1

Those of us who grew up during the Watergate Break-In scandal years clearly remember that sordid episode in our country's history when an embattled administration hunkered down in a crisis management mode, sicced its agents after tis critics, compiled an "enemies list" and tried at every turn to withhold information that may have proven embarrassing to its actions.

The Watergate scandal eventually resulted in the resignation President Richard Nixon and spun off several books and the movie "All The President's Men" starring Robert Redford as Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein, reporters of the Washington Post.

We now have a situation developing in the Cameron County District Attorney's Office where  clear pattern of crisis management via the public relations office has transformed the function of informing the people into a full-blown campaign to protect the image of the office holder on his quest for re-election and to discredit those who would question his performance.

DA Luis Saenz strode into office January 1, 2013 atop a crest of a crusade against the proliferation of eight-liner establishments (so-called maquinitas) which he said bred criminality and lent themselves to money laundering and siphoning of local residents' money to the drug cartels.
He painted Carlos Masso, his opponent in the Democratic primary runoff, as being in bed with "seedy" eight-liner operators. 

In a later interview after a year in office at the end of 203,  he said that the reason for "Operation Bishop," as he labeled the anti-maquinita crusade, was because Catholic Bishop Daniel Flores had complained to Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos that the money his congregations spent on the maquinitas was affecting the church's bingo operations and offering plates' bottom line. Saenz said Cascos had conveyed the bishop's complaint to him and that the name sounded apropo to the operation against the eight-liners. (Cascos later denied this version, but Saenz said it did happen.)

Standing at the steps of the Cameron County courthouse on Harrison Street lather in April, Saenz, surrounded by elected officials and representatives of law enforcement entities including the DA's Office, Sheriff's Dept., county constables, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Texas Rangers, and police departments from Brownsville Harlingen and San Benito, vowed to steam-roll over the maquinita establishments.

"What made the difference was my decision to say 'we're not going to sell these eight-liners back to you. That's what had been happening. You would seize them today and in a matter of days they would make and agreement where they would resell them. What do you think they were going to do once they resold them? They would put them back. So when I put the word out that we're not going to sell them back to you that set off shock waves to the eight-liner community. Some of them started loading them up on their own and moving out."

Saenz also said that his new policy of not selling back the eight-liner machines back to the owners contributed to the success of the operation. In the past, he said that the DA's office under convicted Armando Villalobos would allow the owners to purchase them back at auction and then set up shop again.

Saenz added. “I look forward to the day I can run a steam roller over them.”

Well, we all know that was myth and just four short months later after Saenz made these statements he signed off on the sale of at least 505 eight-liners to Lowkes International whose agent was local attorney Rick Zayas. In fact, Saenz sold the Machines to Lowkes which has two subsidiaries in Brownsville, one of which lists Carlos Masso as its registered agent. The agreement gave Lowkes first dibs on an additional 150 machines at $150 per game. Saenz's office pocketed $100,000 for the first 505 eight-liners that went into his Forfeiture Fund from which he transfers funds for – among other things – to augment the salaries chosen employees in the department.  

How many other sales like it take place? 

After we made that public information request for any sales of eight-liners by the D.A.'s Office, we were stonewalled by Asst. DA Edward Sandoval who took the full 10 days to tell us our request was "vague" and "ambiguous" and that we would have to specify which machines we were talking about.

As the DA's Office scrambled to put out that brush fire, our post was criticized by a local blogger allied with DA PIO Melissa Landin. Where it took us a full 10 days plus to deny us the info, the DA's Office through Landin provided blogger Robert Wightman with the Lowkes contract and later the side agreements with other law enforcement agencies.

Stranding at the front of the courthouse, Saenz told us that his people (like Sandoval) had been "trained not to give up any information" when we spoke with him about the information request we had submitted. 

In fact, there had been lurking suspicions that Wightman had back door access to the DA's Office that other mainstream and social media did not.something both vehemently denied. We decided to make yet another another information request, this time for email communications between Saenz and Landin and Wightman. A few days later, we received a packet containing more than 300 pages covering from Jan. 1,2013 to Jan. 27,2015.

We, of course, did not receive what we asked for. What we got was one-sided record of missives ent by Wightman to Landin and none to Saenz. But even then, the contents were eye-opening and covered not only communications on sundry eight-liner raids, but also a variety of other subjects, including a campaign to spin events to favor Saenz and Landin. But other subjects had nothing to do with the provision of public information or the functions of the prosecutor's office and centered more around the manipulation of information for the public and ongoing court cases involving some of Wightman's relatives.

End Part 1...Next: You scratch my back and I'll stab yours..